I’ve already gone on about Flight Radar 24, at length, so I shall not go into detail about its awesomeness and how said awesomeness appeals to me, if not to others. Clearly it’s becoming a bit of a legend, what with it being used as a reference on broadcast media during last nights extraditions.

I’ll just mention a new and interesting (to me): their increased coverage of aircraft on the ground at Heathrow.

Screen capture from FlightRadar24.com, copyright belonging to them and whoever they get the imagery from

They’ve either worked with BAA to get a feed directly, or they’ve got someone who has a nice line of sight to the field to put a receiver nearby, because the level of detail is awesome. On most airfields the planes disappear from coverage before landing, whereas in Heathrow you can see not only when the plane lands but where it taxis to; in many cases you can see not only what terminal they arrive at but also what gate. For example, in that image there’s a small BA plane at the far left just arriving into terminal 5A; there’s a BA 777 firmly parked at 5B, and the highlighted line is the path an Emirates A380 has taken from Terminal 3, Pier 6 on its way to the queue for take-off from runway 27R.

This level of detail is probably entirely unnecessary and quite boring to most people, including TLW, but I find it fascinating. And quite relaxing, if I’m honest.

The next step will be to go to Heathrow at some point and see ow well the level of detail reflects what can be seen out the window. I understand that there’s a nice view of the apron from Terminal 5…